


For The Man One Loves

by helens78



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bitterness, Doomed Relationship, Established Relationship, M/M, Misunderstanding, Oral Sex, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-07
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:40:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helens78/pseuds/helens78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is the first person Charles has ever been with who doesn't think of other people while they're fucking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Man One Loves

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those stories that justifies my great love of phones with hardware keyboards. I wrote this on my G2 (using Jota Text Editor, if anybody cares, and uploading it to my computer with Dropbox afterwards), while on my treadmill. What would I do without modern technology?!

Sometimes, when he's with a lover or a fuck or a one-night stand, Charles wishes he couldn't read minds. It's lovely to be able to kiss just the right way, hit all the proper hotspots, but he also has to deal with hearing people call other men's names out in their minds, sometimes women's names. He could always shift the image for them, _be_ whoever it is they're really thinking about. When he was younger, he considered it now and then. Give people a fantasy, wipe his own slate with them clean so they wouldn't even remember he'd had them.

But that would have crossed a line. Would have been insulting, for that matter; insulting to _him_. Out of ethics, irritation, or ego, it doesn't really matter-- he hasn't done it. He's just put up with people who clearly don't give a damn that he's the one in their bed.

Erik is the first person Charles has ever been with who doesn't think of other people while they're fucking. Other things, other positions; a memory of Charles's mouth, open and laughing, when Charles's mouth is busy elsewhere. But it's always _Charles_.

Charles loves it. Charles hates it. Erik's never claimed he was going to stay. He has a mission, and he's taken Charles's offer of help because he needs allies, but he's always been clear: when Shaw's dead, he's moving on. When he goes, this will all be over, and Charles won't have it anymore. Erik might be the only person Charles will ever know who wants him this much, wants him so all-consumingly, and Erik is going to _leave him_. It's all over his mind whenever they're not in bed.

"Charles," Erik rasps out, so close Charles knows he could get Erik off with a simple twist of his hand, just the right motion with his tongue. "Yes-- _Charles_ \--"

Charles tightens his lips around Erik's cock. Erik said, _stay out of my head_ , just like everyone else has. And Charles hasn't looked in deeply, hasn't sent Erik so much as a stray thought of his own. Even when Erik is pounding into him, giving it to Charles just right-- or not just right, maybe the angle's off, maybe he's going a little too hard, but his mind is screaming _Charles Charles Charles, God, you're everything_ , and that makes everything bright and shiny and perfect-- Charles _hasn't_. He hasn't let anything slip, has never taken anything Erik wasn't offering.

Surface thoughts don't count, he rationalizes; it would be like not being "allowed" to hear someone's stomach rumbling when they're hungry. And with Charles, Erik is always, always hungry. When all the thoughts at Erik's surface level are blaring _want you, want this, never wanted anyone this way, just you, Charles, yes, you, yes_ , it's killing Charles not to say _you, too, stay with me, please, Erik._

But he doesn't.

Tonight he doesn't do anything apart from what Erik's body guides him to do. He doesn't cheat, doesn't go overboard. He tries not to even skim surface thoughts, tries to push their increasingly insistent buzz aside. He lets Erik drive into his mouth, over and over, makes Erik moan based on nothing more than instinct and the learned habits of seven weeks spent fucking at every possible opportunity. It's like having sex blindfolded, but it's a rush, too. Charles knows Erik doesn't want him because he's some mindreading, fantasy-fulfilling lover. Erik just wants _him_.

"Charles--" But Erik's mind blasts him with _please, please, need it, need to come, don't stop me, I need you, Charles!_ Charles grunts, startled, and reaches up to grip the base of Erik's cock, jerking Erik into his mouth with fast, demanding strokes. Erik doesn't last, clutching at Charles's hair and coming with a groan.

When he's come down from it a little, he collapses backwards onto the bed and gasps, "You. I want to do for you-- what do you want?" And his mind says, _Anything._

Charles licks his lips and comes up on the bed with him, stretching out beside him. He takes Erik's hand in his, guides it between his legs. Erik turns to him, giving Charles all his post-coital attention-- Charles used to think it was lazy attention, barely more than being half-awake, but then he started hearing what Erik was thinking over the blur of his own arousal. _I want you, want you so much, don't go yet, want this to last all night, want it to_ last _. Yes, Charles, yes, anything..._

So much goddamned desperation, and Erik's still planning on leaving as soon as Shaw is dead.

"Just this?" Erik murmurs. "You can have me. Fuck me. Whatever you want."

 _Say it out loud,_ Charles wants to plead. _What you said before, "I need you," say that. Say that to me and mean it out loud, too, where it's real, where you can't take it back later. Say it out loud, so I can beg you to stay._

"Just this," Charles whispers, and when Erik's touched him, stroked him past the point of near-agony and drawn an orgasm from him that makes him bite his lip all but bruised, he feels Erik kiss the tears off his eyelashes.

Erik isn't thinking anything then, not that Charles can read.

When Charles gets up to leave, he reads a burst of disappointment from Erik. It makes him paste a false smile over his face, sunny and uncaring. If Erik were that fucking disappointed, he'd stay. Charles wouldn't have to contemplate humiliating himself, begging for Erik not to leave him when he knows Erik already has. _I can see it, you bastard. All that bloody rehearsal. You think about it every day._

"Something else?" he asks, blinding Erik with false cheer. "I could go another round if we waited a bit."

Unreadable again, Erik shakes his head. "No, I think I'm done for the night. Tomorrow?"

"Time permitting," Charles says. How he manages to say it so lightly, he doesn't know, but he finishes dressing and quietly lets himself out of Erik's room, wondering if one's always supposed to nurture a tiny speck of hatred in one's heart for the man one loves.

 _-end-_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Grain of Contempt (The Whatever Words We Have Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/385922) by [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/pseuds/Unforgotten)




End file.
